J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote: > Matthew Palmer wrote: >> Let me ask you this: if there was an image viewer, which only viewed one >> format of images, and there were no images out there in that format, >> would you >> want to see that in Debian? What if there were images in that format, >> but in order to get them you'd have to break copyright law? > > I think software usefulness is remarkably subjective and not something on > which one should base inclusion in main. Perhaps usefulness is a better > argument for what to include on installation media (versus what to leave > in an online repository to pick up later). > >> That second case is pretty much where we stand with a *lot* of game >> console emulators out there -- the only way to get data to use with them >> is to break >> the law. Wonderful. > > I'd be surprised if this is entirely true all the time everywhere. It > might > be mostly true, but there could be demos (for example) that are DFSG-free. Unlikely; most demos are distributed without source code, but the source code does exist. :-P
> In some countries it might be legal to make dumps of ROMs for one's own > personal > use. In either case, one might want an emulator to run the ROMs one > obtained > legally. Right. Those would be legal, non-free ROMs, and so the emulator goes in 'contrib'. If there were absolutely *no* legal ROMs at *all*, the emulator would probably constitute contributory copyright infringment and be undistributable. :-P > This might not be the most popular use for emulators, but I > don't have any way to measure the most popular use of emulators and that > doesn't > seem to be the criterion for inclusion in main. Perhaps Debian main's > criteria are being interpreted from the perspective of American law? > >> The litmus test here is "a significant amount of functionality", not >> "will refuse to work at all without it", although that's a fairly good >> description of a console without a ROM. > > Would one ROM cut it, then? Yes, in a word! Or, indeed, a compiler designed to create such ROMs. > I am working to determine if one ROM is > available > under a DFSG-free license right now. I don't have much to report yet > except thanks to those who have supplied information to help me track down > the > copyright holder. I should know more soon and I plan to report what I've > learned on debian-legal. -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.